Representation of information on an e-commerce website is vital in order to attract, retain and assist consumers in making purchases. Even though detailed information about products and service offerings is widely available, such information is often not organized in a manner that is personalized or easy for users to discover the best match based on their preferences.
For example, semantic objects representing products and services are often presented in a table format on e-commerce websites. A user can change the order of display of the objects by choosing only one criterion (e.g., price, popularity, size, rating, etc.) at a time. It is difficult for the user to have a global view of the objects, particularly when there are many objects. The user may encounter a display of hundreds of different objects while shopping for a particular product (e.g., computer), making it cumbersome to find one that best matches his or her preferences.
Some websites present more in-depth tables that allow the user to compare each attribute of different objects. However, the user may not find all the displayed attributes to be relevant to the search. Such in-depth tables do not take into account the user's preferences or present a good global overview that allows the user to easily find a best match. Therefore, traditional data representation techniques may have a negative impact on user shopping experience.